Saturday, January 17, 2009

Collateral Damage

Israel is poised to announce a unilateral ceasefire, primarily because all of it's "goals" have been met. Watching and reading, I'm not sure what those goals were, but I'm sure they were very, very important to Israeli security. I was just pouring over some of Israel's achievements, impressive indeed:

410 dead children (not sure if it includes these two unlucky little terrorists today)

1630 children wounded

1201 Palestinians killed (taking out the children and the women, plus civilian men, I'm guessing militants make up an embarrassing percentage of the dead- strategic, compassionate INDEED)

5300 Palestinians wounded

Now to be fair, we also have Israeli casualties:

3 civilians from rocket fire

10 Israeli soldiers (half of which were killed by fellow Israeli soldiers in friendly fire)

Remind me to GAG when the Israeli government declares "victory". Apologists should be ASHAMED of this farcical adventure, that has achieved squat in the grand scheme (unless of course a more united Gaza population behind Hamas was a stated goal).

12 comments:

Bad as those numbers unquestionably are, what do they herald for the future? How many deaths, Israeli and Arab, will be reaped for every one of those Gazan kids? When will we accept that there are no negotiated solutions to this sort of self-perpetuating blood lust? The international community has to step in and impose a peace - on both sides.

Tory@York so they ends justify the means then? So because Hamas is a terrorist, Israel is beyond reproach for the mass state sanctioned killing for hundreds of children that never did anything to anyone? Another example of how Zionism is a violent ideology that is used to justify anything as a means to its own ends.

those qassam rockets suggest that they are not the threat that they are made out to be, with a kill ratio of only 0.4%. 3750 of these contraptions have been hurled over the border since their first use in late 2001 resulting in the untimely deaths of 15 Israelis during the 7 years until the end of December, 2008. That's a kill ratio equal to 15 in 3750 involving an average total of 2 persons per year in a population of over 7 million.

Therefore it is clear that Israel's response is not "self-defense", a concept that necessitates the idea of proportionance. Then there are those like Kinsella who essentially make the same loathsome argument as tony@york: "war is a dirty business, people get killed, get over it".

Machiavellian arguements can never be rational or ethical. Give it up. War crimes are war crimes.

The whole point of a WAR is get a leg up over your opponent. In order to win, your response is supposed to be "disproportionate" as all you Hamas supporters are so fond of saying. Thats why this whole argument is so ridiculous. A war can never be won by returning the exact action you just recieved. If he lobs one shell at you, you lob 10 at him. thats how you win. And yes, war is dirty, people die. GET OVER IT. The responsibility of this conflict lie DIRECTLY with the Palestinians. If the Palestinians lay down all their weapons today, in a week there would be no war. If the Israelis lay down their weapons today, in a week there would be no Israel. Its that simple.

Tory@York again you prove my point that your position is irrational since you insist on calling anyone who disagrees with unconditional support for Israel as "supporters of Hamas". I guess York doesnt have classes in critical thinking. That assertion does not follow

I am certain of one other thing, if Israel were to incur a massive loss of civillian life in an assault, and one used the argument that you proposed above *against* Israel: "And yes, war is dirty, people die. GET OVER IT", it would immediately lead to charges of antisemitism and invocations of the Holocaust and Nazi comparisons from apologists such as yourself.

The concept of "disproportionate" response is not a ridiculous one, it is one of the main arbiters in determining war crimes.

People like yourself have been so blinded by the fanatical ideology of Zionism, so much so, that you cannot even see the difference between good and evil anymore, between the guilty and the innocent. The goal of an apartheid defacto Jewish state that you wish for is, to you, apparently more important than the lives of innocent children. Your ideology clearly is more important to you than innocent life.

Tony, that is something that the overwhelming majority of people with any notion of fairness and justice in the world cannot do - to simply "get over it" whenever war crimes are committed. And it doesnt matter who is guilty of them.